“As Hitler read through the Oberkommand der Wehrmacht (OKW – Headquarters of the Armed Forces) Operations Staff briefing for Operation Blau (Blue), the plan for the 1942 summer campaign, the angrier he got.”
– Disaster at Stalingrad, by Peter Tsouras
“Ignatius Martin Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things.”
“There is an old joke about the audience member who comes up to the conductor after a performance.”
Conducting Business by Leonard Slatkin
“There are a thousand shades of brown.”
Martians Abroad, by Carrie Vaughn
“On the second day of December in a year when a Georgia peanut farmer was doing business in the White House, one of Colorado’s great resort hotels burned to the ground.”
– Doctor Sleep, by Stephen King, his sequel to The Shining
They order, said I, this matter better in France.
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne, author of the inimitable Tristram Shandy.
Turns out I remember only the first clause in a very long sentence:
“There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made.”
“Wish for a good one?”
“Stop comparing me to a dog!” Rita demanded.
Sire and Damn, by Susan Conant.
“To put it in a nutshell, Plinkst was nothing like Ashton Place.”
The Long Lost Home, by Maryrose Wood.
“Six months at sea!”
– Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, by Herman Melville
“The first thing Cain did when he arrived in San Francisco was to steal a car.”
“Tom and the Perfectionist sit in the designated waiting area of Gate 23, Terminal 2, Lester B. Pearson International Airport.”
All My Friends Are Super Heroes, by Andrew Kaufman.
John Quincy Adams had seen this day coming for years.
Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times by H.W. Brands
“It is in our nature to dramatize.”
Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama
Allow me to introduce myself. * The God Box*, Barry B. Longyears.
“The twentieth century produced two great latter-day iterations of Homer’s Odyssey.”
Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece by Michael Benson
“What If Muhammed Ali Had Gotten His Draft Deferment?”
Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History, edited by Mike Pesca
“There was once a little princess whose father was king over a great country full of mountains and valleys.”
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald.
Of shapes transformed to bodies strange I purpose to entreat;
Ye gods vouchsafe for you are they that wrought this wondrous feat.
First Book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses translated by Arthur Golding.